Medvedev: Crimean wages to be upped to level of average salaries in Russia

MOSCOW, March 24. /ITAR-TASS/. Wages of state employees in Crimea will be raised to the average level of salaries in Russia, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said.

“First of all, we are speaking about the wages for teachers and people working in the spheres of medicine and culture,” Medvedev said addressing a session on the social and economic situation in Crimea.

The prime minister also said that the work concerning this issue must be completed as soon as possible adding that the schedule of salaries’ raise would be worked out separately.

The Republic of Crimea, where most residents are Russians, held a referendum on March 16, in which it decided to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, and subsequently signed a treaty with Moscow on Crimea's accession to the Russian Federation on March 18. Last week the treaty was ratified by the Russian parliament’s upper house and signed by President Vladimir Putin.

In the Soviet Union, Crimea used to be part of Russia until 1954, when Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the USSR’s Communist Party, transferred it to Ukraine's jurisdiction. In 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Crimea became part of newly independent Ukraine.

Crimea had its own Constitution in the early 1990s. In 1995, Ukraine’s parliament canceled Crimea’s Constitution.